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2025: The Year in LLMs

simonwillison.net

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Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#361

Post by sph »

syndacks wrote: post #89

I can’t get over the range of sentiment on LLMs. HN leans snake oil, X leans “we’re all cooked” —- can it possibly be both? How do other folks make sense of this? I’m not asking for a side, rather understanding the range. Does the range lead you to believe X over Y?

Truth lies in the middle. Yes LLM are an incredible piece of technology, and yes we are cooked because once again technologists and VC have no idea nor interest in understanding the long-term societal ramifications of technology.

Now we are starting to agree that social media has had disastrous effects that have not fully manifested yet, and in the same breath we accept a piece of technology that promises to replace large parts of society with machines controlled by a few megacorps and we collectively shrug with “eh, we’re gonna be alright.” I mean, until recently the stated goal was to literally recreate advanced super-intelligence with the same nonchalance one releases a new JavaScript framework unto the world.

I find it utterly maddening how divorced STEM people have become from philosophical and ethical concerns of their work. I blame academia and the education system for creating this massive blind spot, and it is most apparent in echo chambers like HN that are mostly composed of Western-educated programmers with a degree in computer science. At least on X you get, among the lunatics, people that have read more than just books on algorithms and startups.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#362

Post by steveBK123 »

pjc50 wrote: post #289
ksec wrote: post #228

All these improvement in a single year, 2025. While this may seem obvious to those who follows along the AI / LLM news. It may be worth pointing out again ChatGPT was introduced to us in November 2022. I still dont believe AGI, ASI or Whatever AI will take over human in short period of time say 10 - 20 years. But it is hard to argue against the value of current AI, which many of the vocal critics on HN seems to have…

Investing a trillion dollars for a revenue of a billion dollars doesn't sound great yet.

Indeed, its the old Uber playbook at nearly two extra orders of magnitude.

It is a large enough number to simply run out of private capital to consume before it turns cash flow positive.

Lots of things sell well if sold at such a loss. I’d take a new Ferrari for $2500 if it was on offer.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#363

Post by steveBK123 »

chias wrote: post #256
ksec wrote: post #228

All these improvement in a single year, 2025. While this may seem obvious to those who follows along the AI / LLM news. It may be worth pointing out again ChatGPT was introduced to us in November 2022. I still dont believe AGI, ASI or Whatever AI will take over human in short period of time say 10 - 20 years. But it is hard to argue against the value of current AI, which many of the vocal critics on HN seems to have…

These are not all improvements. Listed: * The year of YOLO and the Normalization of Deviance * The year that Llama lost its way * The year of alarmingly AI-enabled browsers * The year of the lethal trifecta * The year of slop * The year that data centers got extremely unpopular

> * The year that data centers got extremely unpopular

I was discussing the political angle with a friend recently. I think Big Tech Bro / VC complex has done themselves a big disservice by aligning so tightly with MAGA to the point AI will be a political issue in 2026 & 2028.

Think about the message they’ve inadvertently created themselves - AI is going to replace jobs, it’s pushing electric prices up, we need the government to bail us out AND give us a regulatory light touch.

Super easy campaign for Dems - big tech trumpers are taking your money, your jobs, causing inflation, and now they want bailouts !!

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#365

Post by reppap »

cebert wrote: post #70
didip wrote: post #67

Indeed. I don't understand why Hacker News is so dismissive about the coming of LLMs, maybe HN readers are going through 5 stages of grief? But LLM is certainly a game changer, I can see it delivering impact bigger than the internet itself. Both require a lot of investments.

Many people feel threatened by the rapid advancements in LLMs, fearing that their skills may become obsolete, and in turn act irrationally. To navigate this change effectively, we must keep open minds, keep adaptable, and embrace continuous learning.

I'm not threatened by LLMs taking my job as much as they are taking away my sanity. Every time I tell someone no and they come back to me with a "but copilot said.." it's followed by something entirely incorrect it makes me want to autodefenestrate.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#366

Post by simonw »

fullstackchris wrote: post #299

> The reason I think MCP may be a one-year wonder is the stratospheric growth of coding agents. It appears that the best possible tool for any situation is Bash—if your agent can run arbitrary shell commands, it can do anything that can be done by typing commands into a terminal. I push back strongly from this. In the case of the solo, one-machine coder, this is likely the case - if you're exposing workflows or fixed…

The solution to that is Anthropic's Skills.

Create a folder called skills/how-to-use-jira

Add several Bash scripts with the right curl commands to perform specific actions

Add a SKILL.md file with some instructions in how to use those scripts

You've effectively flattened that MCP server into some Markdown and Bash, only the thing you have now is more flexible (the coding agent can adapt those examples to cover new things you hadn't thought to tell it) and much more context-efficient (it only reads the Markdown the first time you ask it to do something with JIRA).

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#367

Post by simonw »

rr808 wrote: post #302

What happened to Devin? 2024 it was a leading contender now it isn't even included in the big list of coding agents.

To be honest that's more because I've never tried it myself, so it isn't really on my radar.

I don't hear much buzz about it from the people I pay attention to. I should still give it a go though.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#369

Post by callc »

reppap wrote: post #365
cebert wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people feel threatened by the rapid advancements in LLMs, fearing that their skills may become obsolete, and in turn act irrationally. To navigate this change effectively, we must keep open minds, keep adaptable, and embrace continuous learning.

I'm not threatened by LLMs taking my job as much as they are taking away my sanity. Every time I tell someone no and they come back to me with a "but copilot said.." it's followed by something entirely incorrect it makes me want to autodefenestrate.

I am happy “autodefenestrate” is the first new word I learned in 2026. Thank you.

Autodefenestrate - To eject or hurl oneself from a window, especially lethally

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#370

Post by windexh8er »

ordersofmag wrote: post #357
windexh8er wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are helping their users create things that didn't exist before. That is a derived output. That isn't new as in: novel. It may be unique but it is derived from training data. LLMs legitimately cannot think and thus they cannot create in that way.

I will find this often-repeated argument compelling only when someone can prove to me that the human mind works in a way that isn't 'combining stuff it learned in the past'. 5 years ago a typical argument against AGI was that computers would never be able to think because "real thinking" involved mastery of language which was something clearly beyond what computers would ever be able to do. The implication was that t…

> 5 years ago a typical argument against AGI was that computers would never be able to think because "real thinking" involved mastery of language which was something clearly beyond what computers would ever be able to do.

Mastery of words is thinking? In that line of argument then computers have been able to think for decades.

Humans don't think only in words. Our context, memory and thoughts are processed and occur in ways we don't understand, still.

There's a lot of great information out there describing this [0][1]. Continuing to believe these tools are thinking, however, is dangerous. I'd gather it has something to do with logic: you can't see the process and it's non-deterministic so it feels like thinking. ELIZA tricked people. LLMs are no different.

[0] https://archive.is/FM4y8 [0] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/l... [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/secondary-school-maths-show...

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